When customers are afraid to say YES

There are many people out there who believe that marketing and sales is all about one big manipulation. I strongly disagree. The best marketing in fact should be educational and enlightening. Is this a manipulation? No, something else happens when someone is enlightened. They are moved to a new place of understanding and usually it is in a positive context.

As with any change in beliefs the biggest obstacle anyone faces in their own inner fear. These fears come in many ways. It could be simply – fear of manipulation, fear of the product not working for them, or fear of committing to something they cannot afford and are not sure if they want.

Saying ‘yes’, to anything does involve a commitment. A commitment to anything from doing something different through to simply understanding something in the same way as the other person is suggesting. This simple ‘yes’ has a lot of to do with the same feelings we have to saying ‘yes’ to a marriage proposal, buying a house, accepting a job or deciding on any kind of life change. Each one of these decisions were preceded by a certain level of fear.

As you can see I am talking about some major shifts in life, and particularly with buying a house, a major financial commitment also. But we must also look at it from the point of view of each of these changes are often steps forward or maturing cornerstones.

To bring these major life shifts down somewhat, as we all know they require considerable thought and risk, we need to take the same principles down quite a few notches and consider them in terms of the smaller transactions we do in life. Not every action we take in life will be forever life changing, however in a small way it can be life changing to a certain degree. This is what the marketing and sales person needs to understand first in their customer.

If a sales person is able to gauge fairly early on the level of ‘fear factor’ in their prospect, they will find their task a lot easier. For example, the very first thing the sales person needs to understand is if there is a need, does the person understand how much it costs, and can the person afford it. If there is a clear ‘no’ to each of these, then the sales person shouldn’t waste their time further. If the sales person can see that there is a yes to at least one, there is a high % of success possible, it now all comes down to the sales technique. If the customer didn’t end up saying yes, the only person to blame is the sales person.

But the closed sale does require some other conditions to be present too. These are all factors that can be nurtured by the sales person:

1. The customer believes your offering is unique or rare. In general, this means that you have established that your firm is the only viable source for what the customer actually needs to solve the problem.

2. The customer considers you an authority. You have revealed something about your specific background or experience that leads the customer to consider you uniquely knowledgeable about the issues involved.

3. The customer understands that buying will bolster this customer’s self-image. The customer has made specific statements that define himself or herself as the type of person who needs and buys what you’re offering.

4. The customer knows peers who’ve bought from you. Customers are deeply swayed by “social pressure” which you generally create by providing examples and references that match the profile of the current customer.